11.06.2011

Mozart. Music. Flowers & poetry.

It’s Sunday morning, we’ve
just gained an hour, and it’s pouring down rain. It’s perfect. The next Dinner at Eight is creeping up and
I’ve been testing recipes like it’s nobody’s business (or definitely like it’s
my business). I’m very pleased with the creamy chestnut soup, though I haven’t
settled on its garnish. The only problem with the soup is that I gave all my
friends samples of it and completely forgot to take some to Jill so she can
assess an appropriate paIring. So I’ll be making that again today.

Maggie is infusing the vodka
with kabocha and acorn squash for her cocktail and Esi just dropped off her
first go at the pumpkin bread pudding with bourbon-vanilla sauce. And I have
made two, overly massive, rounds of the short-rib stew with mushroom and
parsley dumplings. The second one pretty much nailed it. Save for the anxiety
dream in which I told the guests the wrong date resulting in no one showing up,
I think everything is on course.

It seems things are going
well in my universe. Things are stable. Work is picking up, I finally caught up
on Sons of Anarchy and sleep, and an old, college friend, Frampy,
stopped through town for a visit. That was nice. Mostly.

But let’s get back to the
stew. And the dumplings. You see, I had never made dumplings before this whole
project. I didn’t really know exactly what to expect. The recipe I used is from
The Colony Club Cookbook: one of the dozen old school cookbooks I brought back
from my recent trip to Richmond. The recipes in this – and many of the
cookbooks from this place and time – are very archaic and very, very simple.
They are made for people who were already familiar with the techniques and
ingredients that they require and also with how the end result should look,
feel, smell, and taste. They are short and sweet.

But for someone like me, who
is accustomed to Sunday
Suppers at Lucques, with recipes
that are pages long, these old school cookbooks are so simple that they become
complex.

For instance, with this stew (recipe originally from Gloria Brahany),
after searing off the short ribs in their flour mixture, I am supposed to
combine four cups tomatoes, some garlic and a little Worcestershire, simmer for
and hour and a half and pour over ribs. Fresh tomatoes? Canned tomatoes? This is my stock? No red wine? No chicken or beef stock? The rest of the directions instruct me to add sliced carrot, onion, potato, and simmer for
forty-five minutes. Well, that’s hardly enough time to get the veggies all soft
and smushy. Where’s the bay leaf? Where’s the thyme? Hell, where’s the salt and
pepper?

Apparently the good folks
using this cookbook needed only some bare bones, a skeleton off of which they
could riff. And it’s true, a basic beef stew is not rocket science. But what’s
the point of a cookbook then, right?

So first off the lack of
anything except tomato that would create liquid bemused me. But the tomatoes quickly became a viable stock, if a bit too
sweet. And too tomato-y. Also, Maggie thought that we should do mushroom and
parsley dumplings rather than just parsley dumplings. Without thinking I followed
the recipe for parsley dumplings and did not compensate for the amount of
moisture the mushrooms would add. The dumplings fell apart if you merely looked at
them too hard.

Okay. Round two. This time I
began with marinating the short ribs in red wine, salt and pepper overnight. I
then used about half the tomatoes but added two cups of home made chicken stock
and a quarter cup of the marinade wine. I doubled the garlic, added a bay leaf,
a sprig of fresh sage, a little thyme and a generous amount of salt and pepper. For the dumplings
I compensated for the moisture by adding a great deal more flour, less milk and a drop
more salt. I also made the dumplings considerably smaller as they poof up twice
their original size once they steam up. They still looked weird to me, but
after I did some research online, they looked exactly the way they were
supposed to.

Another example of how
stripped down the instructions in the cookbook are. There is no description of
how things are supposed to turn out.

The fact that I used Lindy Grundy’s meat the second go ‘round also made a world of difference. I would
have used theirs the first time but they were closed on the day I needed to get
started. Of course, their meat will be used for the stew at the dinner party.

So, in the time it’s taken
me to write this, the sun has come out and the sky is clear and bright blue. I’ve
still got that extra hour. It’s perfect.

But we are full-on in the
throes of Fall and Winter is three weeks away. The holidays are not far off. It’s
time for stew.